PROJECTION PORTFOLIO
SCRIPT AND PROJECTION IDEAS
RESEARCH
RESEARCH
Projection Creation Process
For this production, I acted as the projectionist, generating 13 scenes that explore various techniques including sourcing, editing, collaging, composing, and the use of colors. Each scene was carefully crafted to ensure that the content and visual elements were deeply connected to the narrative's meaning, enhancing the story's emotional and psychological depth.
I started my process by breaking down the script an each scene, exploring the context, the deeper meaning and the evolution of the mental state of Gaia, the main character.
The overall setting: New York, Lower East Side, the 80s
The story revolves around a young girl who escaped from a cult and is now a struggling singer in New York. Her past, memories, and the cult continue to haunt her, and this psychological tension is central to the narrative.
In my projection making I explored two styles, the realist sceneries, allowing to set our main character in a specific time and space, and the more eerie ones, representing her past, her memories and the surrealism that comes out of it. Throughout the performance this realism and surrealism start to blend.
I have had a bit of experience with projection making (We Move 2023) however I had previously worked with abstract shapes and animation. This project taught me to push editing barriers, to explore the intersection of realislm and surrealism, and the real creative potential projection holds. It has allowed me to develop skills such as navigating After Effects, Isadora and Qlab.
Setting the World in Projection:
As a setting and place we chose to explore the Lower East Side in New-York in the 1980’s. I explored and researched archives, documentaries of this period of time and place, researching particularly streetscapes. This period was characterized by its gritty atmosphere, artistic communities, and a vibrant yet rough urban landscape and this is something I wanted to reflect through my projection making and sourcing. The authenticity of these specific scene settings is crucial to grounding the story in its space and time setting. Link to article
IMPORTANT REFERENCES
Realist Places and Surrealism
In contrast, the surrealist scenes are employed to depict the protagonist's memories and experiences with the cult. There are many scenes of non-place, flashbacks and scenes of the cult. For those I experimented creatively through editing, composition, colors and abstract shapes to create those eerie scenes that are experienced through the show. I explored distortion, surrealist scaling, symbolism and layering in my editing process. The contrast between the gritty reality and the eerie, surreal memories enhances the psychological depth of the story.
Emotional State and Visual Representation
The protagonist's emotional state is a key focus, and her mental degradation is reflected in the visuals. As she becomes more distressed, the visuals become increasingly chaotic and disjointed. This is achieved through: overlapping imagery, and fragmented imagery to depict her inner turmoil. I explored distorted cityscapes to reflect her anxiety and panic. It was important for the show to explore foreshadowing, so subtle, eerie elements are embedded in realistic scenes to hint at her past and foreshadow her psychological breakdown. The visuals are designed to reflect her state of mind, making the audience experience her confusion, fear, and sense of being trapped.
MOODBOARDS
DEVELOPMENT
IMPORTANT REFERENCES
Inspirations
The projection creation process, and specifically its atmosphere, are inspired by the works of Martin Scorsese and David Lynch. Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" serves as a reference for its gritty, intense atmosphere and exploration of isolation and madness. The protagonist’s journey mirrors the descent into psychological turmoil seen in "Taxi Driver."
David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" is another major influence, particularly for its exploration of surrealism and the eerie blending of reality and dreams. The surrealist elements in the story are crafted to evoke a similar sense of disorientation and unease, creating a haunting depiction of the protagonist’s memories and experiences.
By combining these influences, the projections aim to create a rich, immersive experience that captures the protagonist's struggle with her past and the psychological impact of her experiences. The mix of realist and surrealist elements, coupled with a focus on emotional degradation, creates a powerful narrative that resonates with the themes of memory, trauma, and the quest for identity.
THE WORM SCENE EXPERIMENTATION
The Worm Scene is a key moment in the story, showing a flashback of Gaia’s (as a child) night discussion with the “Mother.” This scene is important because it symbolizes her future destiny and explores themes of death. I wanted to create a surreal scene that captures this theme, so I thought of using worms crawling in the earth, symbolizing death and decomposition.
Creating this projection was a long and challenging process. I had a clear idea of having worms coming out of the soil to represent death in a gory and textural way. I struggled so much finding the right footage, many videos I found didn't match what I envisioned, the quality was bad, the worms too small, and the ones I liked I had to pay for. I knew clearly what I wanted: big worms that slowly move and emerge from the earth, I wanted to create almost a painting, a moving composition.
I finally found two videos I visually found powerful and which didn’t have a watermark. They were really short but I realized I could experiment with time and looping. I was a bit restricted by the fact that I only had two potential clips, however, it allowed to create a beautiful, almost monochromatic composition, with elements of repetition and where I could explore Scale and movement. For this scene, I learned to use after effects, with Dimtrios, and I learned lots of new tricks and skills, such as time displacement.
This process was very draining and complicated (I had never spent that much time experimenting and editing) and it required a lot of patience and attention to detail, but in the end, I was able to create a powerful, symbolic projection. The final scene effectively conveys the themes of death and decay, foreshadowing Gaia’s fate and adding depth to the story with its surreal and haunting visuals.
DEVELOPLEMENT AND EXPERIMENTATION
EXPERIMENTATION - WORMS SEQUENCE
DEVELOPMENT AND CONCLUSION
After researching, sourcing and selecting potential clips, came the part of creative experimentation. I have had the change to have the time to experiment, try projections in the space, explore different compositions and choices to present and select. This was a very lengthy and enriching process, allowing my skills, and creative identity to develop. I had the chance to have technician Dimitrios Coumados teaching me how to use and navigate After Effects and Isadora for Projection Mapping. It was an interesting process, as scenes or settings would often change, or Pete would ask me to add projections in certain scenes, so It was a constant process of thinking, researching, experimenting, editing and trying it out in the space. In this part of my portfolio I will highlight my creative development and experimentation, before the final products.
EXPERIMENTATION AND DEVELOPMENT
FINAL PROJECTIONS TIMELAPSE
You can observe here some of my development images and projections, on screen and shown in screens in the Platform Theatre. We had a very particular set up for this production, as there was the elevator in the front, a front screen that would cover the entrance of the elevator (was flied in and out) a Gauze in middle stage and a large backscreen upstage. We had to play with proportions a lot as the audience all had very different views on the screens depending on their position.
For example for the apartment scenes, (watching in the flat and out a window to New York landscapes),if we would try to scale the views based on the hanging large window, people from different positions would see the delimitations of the image. That is why I decided to scale those images very large, playing simultaneously on the surreality of the scenes. It created very powerful images, eerie and unsettling, which linked to the text's themes of mind unraveling and paranoia.
One of my favorite scenes to edit was the backstage bar scene, sourced from "Taxi Driver." I edited this footage for the performance, changing the colors and composing a new image by duplicating and layering bits to add surreal elements. The original three-second clip was extended to a smooth 30-second loop with added rain effects using Isadora. For this scene, I used Adobe Premiere to explore various color grading effects.
The train sequence was particularly interesting to work on. I aimed to create a hypnotizing, destabilizing, and spiraling effect, mirroring Gaia’s mental state and referencing the rabbit hole in "Alice in Wonderland." The editing process was detailed and lengthy, requiring seamless layering to keep the train in constant motion.
Working with Pete was very intense and enriching as through the production week, there were always additions to the list of projection scenes I had to produce. It was an intense process of sourcing, instilling surrealism, and composing symbolic imagery (for example the blinking eyes for cult scenes, the veiled grabbing hands). Despite the intensity, Pete's high expectations pushed me further, resulting in strong, meaningful, and connected projections. I learned a lot from working with him.
A skill I particularly developed during this project was creating scenes and projection mapping using Isadora, with the help of Dimitrios. This was a particularly interesting and complicated Isadora set up (three screens with very particular set ups) scenes and connections to the elevator, so it allowed me to explore all those technicalities.